World Families Forums - Worth of Oppenheimer, Sykes et. al? / Origins of British people

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And you really don't want to know what they call Barry Cunliffe, either ..He seems to have inherited some of the flak that Grahame Clark used to get for his hypothetical long-range deep-sea mesolithic fisherfolk, with especial vitriol being reserved for those who linked it with the onset of "Atlantic Facade" megalithism as some sort of unitary Kulturkreis. Rather than a lack of suitable timber ...

So these archaeologists you know;what do they think of the celtic from the west hypothesis?

So these archaeologists you know;what do they think of the celtic from the west hypothesis?

Insofar as they think of anything at all, other than where their next meal is coming from, I think it's completely unknown even as a conjecture.There's a vague acceptance of beaker "package" a la Shennan being the terminus post quem for arrival, some minority burbling over it even being a dialect of some sort of imaginary pan-european neolithic language continuum (yah! rilly!) in which the NW groups gradually became more "celtic" (a bit like John Boardman's answer to the question "who were the greeks?". Ans. "they were always becoming greek"), and a bit of speculating over iberian peninsula inscriptions, with the tacit understanding that the celtic element there is intrusive from 'somewhere to the east'.

Don't get me wrong, they're smart people. But all that theoretical stuff is for the linguists, anthropologists and prehistorians.Way above their pay grade, as they'd be the first to insist. They deal strictly in the concrete and tangible.Language is an irrelevance to them, unless it's been scratched on a rock by some grieving tribesman.

Most at a guess would be quite happy with its oldest forms drifting in on top of some already not-too-dissimilar substrate during Dev.-Rim./Middle Bronze Age/Urnfield times, from roots as far back as Unetice at a push.Before that it would be I suppose unwise and anachronistic to even use such terms as "celtic", "italic", "german" or "slavonic".

But I don't know anyone who requires a non-central-europe-in-the-broadest-most-handwaving-sense origin to fit in with whatever they might be working on. Irremediably provincial, yer diggers and the like. tl;drSorry Bren I have no data on that. Language just isn't part of their mental landscape, I'd guess.

I read Oppenheimer's book, The Origins of the British, three or four times soon after it was published. It was entertaining, but I always thought it was wrong, mainly because it just assumed up front that R1b was in the F-C Ice Age refuge and expanded from there after the LGM. Oppenheimer also used 6-marker haplotypes, which are much too small to be of much use. For example, I fit in his "FMH" (Frisian Modal Haplotype) category (I think it was called that), but I am L21+.

I read Oppenheimer's book, The Origins of the British, three or four times soon after it was published. It was entertaining, but I always thought it was wrong, mainly because it just assumed up front that R1b was in the F-C Ice Age refuge and expanded from there after the LGM. Oppenheimer also used 6-marker haplotypes, which are much too small to be of much use. For example, I fit in his "FMH" (Frisian Modal Haplotype) category (I think it was called that), but I am L21+.

That book has done a lot of damage because it popularized error.

On Oppenheimer's clans, Campbell did a pretty good "deconstruction" of them.

Analysis of the results of Oppenheimer’s genotyping has been illuminating. When Oppenheimer Clans are viewed on Ron Scott’s Web site as series of 12- or 25-marker haplotypes, there does not appear to be any obvious pattern among the Clan designations. However, when each participant’s markers are reduced to the six microsatellites present in the underlying Capelli/Oppenheimer dataset, a definite pattern begins to emerge – i.e. a unique combination of these six markers seem to result in a unique Oppenheimer cluster.

Ofcourse we now know most British sub-clades of R1b are rare-ish in Iberia.

Exactly. In short, "clusters" or "clans" at 6 markers come apart at 12 and 25 markers. And 12 and 25 markers aren't a lot either. Clusters at 12 and 25 markers come apart at 37, and some 37-marker clusters start to come apart at 67 markers.

I think it was Ken Nordtvedt who dubbed Oppenheimer's str data "bikini haplotypes".

Exactly. In short, "clusters" or "clans" at 6 markers come apart at 12 and 25 markers. And 12 and 25 markers aren't a lot either. Clusters at 12 and 25 markers come apart at 37, and some 37-marker clusters start to come apart at 67 markers.

I think it was Ken Nordtvedt who dubbed Oppenheimer's str data "bikini haplotypes".

Exactly. In short, "clusters" or "clans" at 6 markers come apart at 12 and 25 markers. And 12 and 25 markers aren't a lot either. Clusters at 12 and 25 markers come apart at 37, and some 37-marker clusters start to come apart at 67 markers.

I think it was Ken Nordtvedt who dubbed Oppenheimer's str data "bikini haplotypes".

I paid actual money for Celtic from the West -- because the local public libraries (which are big) don't have it, and it's hard to park at the ones that do (Library of Congress, several universities). And I've been chugging along through the thing... came to the chapter by Oppenheimer, and it was like stepping back in time. Where has this guy been? Oh... I see, in his library. Which seems well stocked with DNA studies by, hmm, Oppenheimer.

Anyway, it's hard to read and wince at the same time, so it took a while, but I've plowed through. I agree with Alan T.H. that he basically got everything wrong (the dates, the clusters). But then this was for a conference way back in 2008, the infancy of our burgeoning science. And he kept citing his own 2006 work, which was probably written in about 2004. And if that was "juried," the jury was at least as underinformed as the author; who knew anything, then? Not I, certainly.

Still, it seems intrusive, in an otherwise fairly interesting book. Now, all I need to do is learn to read Tartessian, and I can move on to the more innovative parts. For instance, whatever was scratched on rocks by grieving tribesmen. (Good one, Glentane.)

Oh, one other thing -- the lengthy essay by Raimund Karl ("The Celts from Everywhere and Nowhere") is actually good stuff, that almost certainly needed to be said; but the author's penchant for use of quotation marks around every fourth word or so gets old, before one is very far into it. I kept thinking about this website:

I wouldn't want to say what he's pushing now. The paperback edition of Celtic from the West says 2012 on the title page, but it's still the report from a 2008 conference. At that time, he was just quoting himself, saying the 2006 vintage things this thread has objected to. Using Zhivotovsky magical multipliers (I assume), to make events that interest him happen about three to seven times earlier than they actually did happen. R1b guys who had wintered in Spain, swarming back to populate the thawing British Isles 18K ybp, and that sort of thing.

I believe the British term for this is a "load of bollocks." May be mistaken, I just have a reading knowledge of British.

As I noted earlier in the thread, in the 3rd episode of How God made the English, there was a interview with him and he was still supporting his old ideas. I'm not sure when the interview was filmed, probably last year.

One giveaway about these books is that you can pick them up for the price of a beer now.

Actually, the price of a gumball is more like it (check eBay or Amazon). BTW, beer will always be better than books--it brings us wisdom in the most profound ways.

Arch

lol true. You could hardly give away a copy now. Still, it was briefly interesting and provided a talking point. Hopefully a new popular book will undo the new myths this created. Maybe Jean's book will do the job!

I wouldn't want to say what he's pushing now. The paperback edition of Celtic from the West says 2012 on the title page, but it's still the report from a 2008 conference. At that time, he was just quoting himself, saying the 2006 vintage things this thread has objected to. Using Zhivotovsky magical multipliers (I assume), to make events that interest him happen about three to seven times earlier than they actually did happen. R1b guys who had wintered in Spain, swarming back to populate the thawing British Isles 18K ybp, and that sort of thing.

I believe the British term for this is a "load of bollocks." May be mistaken, I just have a reading knowledge of British.

Yep, 'total tosh' would work to but a little old fashioned, bollocks sounds right :)

Pony & trap!Cheers,BobPS Burk, pronounced as per lurk, is pretty commonly used on TV, however they did actually slip in the cruder 'Berk' pronounced Bark during an episode of BBC TV's 'Fools & Horses' once. They didn't get a single complaint. I can't fully explain it here, except to say there was a famous hunt in Berkshire!